[Velvet]

Originally Posted by davephan

We moved to Florida in December and signed the paperwork in January to have a 24 KW natural gas whole house electric generator installed. There’s a long backlog to get the generator installed. The generator will be installed in mid July.

It’s not cheap to have a whole house electric generator installed. The cost is about $13,000. But if you worked hard in life, obtaining a high income job, and lived well below your means for decades, saving and carefully investing a lot of money for decades. Then spending that kind of money is not a problem in your retirement years, because you can’t take the money with you.

We planned on getting a whole house electric generator when we moved to Florida, during our four years of house hunting. We don’t want to risk putting up with possible long power outages. Sweltering without AC, and having everything in the refrigerator and freezer turned into garbage.

We have two AC units. One for the master bedroom suite and another for the rest of the house. So, we can limp by if one of the AC units fail.

We thought about buying a smaller gasoline generator. But storing many 5 gallon gasoline cans in the garage is not something we’d want to do, for safety reasons. If you owned a small, portable generator, you’d need a concrete slab installed, and a security cage, so it wouldn’t be stolen. Refilling the gasoline tank would be very unpleasant in pouring rain, hurricane force winds, possible debris blowing around that could hit you, and frequent lightning strikes.

The generator will be installed on the opposite side of the house from the master bedroom suite, so we won’t hear it much, when it runs.

The one concern I had was about the natural gas. If there’s a widespread electric outage, does this impact the pressure in the natural gas distribution system? The answer is, a widespread electric power outage doesn’t impact the natural gas pressure, because the natural gas pressure is maintained my very large generators that are powered by natural gas.

There’s a small risk of experiencing a natural gas outage if you were very unlucky, and a downed tree severed the natural gas distribution line.

A large buried propane tank is an option, but it would add another $4,000 to the cost of the system, and probably would never be needed.

The peace of mind that the whole house natural gas electric electric generator gives us is worth the cost to us, especially because we can easily afford the cost.

My emergency power outage kit:

I have a small RV type portable inverse generator weighs about 100 lb. it’s noise level is below 60 db so one can sleep beside it. We have driveways in TV and I can roll it out - it has wheels, 20ft from the house for carbon monoxide protection. It is clean and stored in the garage for emergency. The 25 ft extension cable to get in the house heavy gauge 4 outlet and then inside extensions for fridge and tv and fans and a couple of lights. Draws very little power, my AC would draw a lot, means lots of noise! 2 gas cans 5 gal each, a hand siphon if I need gas from car or golf cart. A generator tent rated for storm to be erected over it. And a strong spot light with batteries to see if I have to start it up at 3:00 am in total darkness and in the middle of one of our regular hurricane rain and wind. Cost about $1000 for everything. I pay more for my car insurance. Like with the car I hope I never have to use it. And because I am not physically particularly strong I got a generator with electric start button.

It’s not as convenient as the standby I have up north which kicks in automatically 3 seconds after the power goes out. But neither is it so noisy or expensive.